TOP STORY
Rebuilding Effort in Haiti Turns Away From Tents.
Shifting tactics in the race to shelter an estimated one million Haitians displaced by the earthquake, aid groups on Wednesday began to de-emphasize tents in favor of do-it-yourself housing with tarpaulins at first, followed by lumber.
Mark Turner, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said that a move toward "transitional shelters" — built eventually with lumber and some steel — would give people sturdier structures and more flexibility.
More news about Haiti and the list of disaster relief links below.
For the comprehensive list of disaster relief links, please check out Haiti Earthquake Relief at dkosopedia.
Top story continued:
Housing Haiti's homeless sparks debate as rains loom – at least 200,000 tents needed to house the homeless.
With coming seasonal rains threatening to pile further misery on more than 700,000 homeless quake victims camped out in the shattered capital, Haiti's government and its international aid partners are urgently debating how and where to shelter survivors while the recovery work goes ahead.
...Struggling to get his impoverished country back on its feet after the catastrophic quake that killed up to 200,000 people, President Rene Preval's government has appealed for aid groups to provide at least 200,000 tents to house the homeless.
Cruise ships could help by housing people as they did after Hurricane Katrina.
PG: I don’t want to abuse their intentions but the demonstration of those intentions really got them in trouble. I would think Royal Caribbean could dedicate a cruise ship—much like they did after Hurricane Katrina—where you could anchor it off the coast, put in three times the number of people that would normally stay on a cruise ship, hot bunk them in eight-hour shifts, and tender them to shore. That could really put them to good use instead of sailing to an outer island and saying we’re helping the economy because we’re buying alcoholic drinks.
... The bottom line is when you have all this excess capacity in the cruise industry, it would seem to be a wonderful opportunity for them to dedicate at least one ship and not worry where the revenue is going to come from. Especially considering how much money they make every year from stopping in countries like Haiti.
REBUILDING & RECOVERY
- Bill Clinton to coordinate Haiti aid efforts.
Ban later told reporters he had asked Clinton to launch a new emergency appeal on February 17 to fund humanitarian efforts for the rest of the year. The United Nations launched its first "flash" appeal -- for $575 million -- last month and said last Friday it had been 82 percent funded.
- Haiti's government struggles for control amid confusion, no input into how aid allocated.
To find Haiti's lawmakers, drive to the police academy, then hunt through the rows of corrugated tin shacks sitting on cement blocks. Inside some of them, members of parliament, whose headquarters collapsed, have been meeting in special session.
Many are seething because they have had no input into how the massive influx of earthquake aid is being allocated, says delegate Steven Benoit.
HAITI LIFE
- Quake Takes Its Toll On Haiti's Burial Rites.
With an estimated death toll as high as 200,000 in Haiti from the Jan. 12 quake, mass burials have replaced the traditional rituals for honoring the dead. In a land where funeral rites and the spiritual afterlife are central tenets, many Haitians are upset that so many bodies have been buried without ceremony.
- Haiti's Hidden Treasures: Haiti's ethnomusic traditions recorded decades ago is now being released by Harte Records. (video at link)
Decades before last month's tragic earthquake, Haiti was in the news because of an upheaval of an entirely different kind. The republic had been occupied by American troops for 19 years. But after a series of bloody massacres and insurrections, the U.S. Marines were withdrawn in 1934. Two years later, an American named Alan Lomax landed in Haiti not with weapons but with a portable recording device. He'd been commissioned by the Library of Congress to document Haiti's ethnomusic traditions.
Encouraged by the writer Zora Neale Hurston (who sings on three tracks), Lomax recorded local music in Haiti for four months. During that period, the 21-year-old scholar and historian captured roughly 50 hours of sound recordings that were then buried in a U.S. government vault for more than seven decades, never seeing the light of day. Until now. "Alan Lomax in Haiti," 10 discs and a copiously illustrated and annotated booklet, have recently been released by Harte Recordings in conjunction with the Lomax Estate and the Library of Congress. (The price of the box set has just been reduced, with a portion of sales going directly to local disaster-relief organizations in Haiti. For more details go to thehaitibox.blogspot.com)
- A Glimpse of Haiti Before the Catastrophe. (video and pictures at link)
Since life in Haiti was not a common subject in international news reports until the country was devastated by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake three weeks ago, it is something of a shock to view the short video embedded below, which was shot just over a month ago by a Haitian photographer named Frederic Dupoux to document New Year’s Eve in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.
- US Carriers Not Planning Haiti Flights Yet.
American and Delta airlines say they have not set a date for resuming regular service to Haiti, and they continue to cancel flights for the next several days.
Both carriers have operated relief missions approved by U.S. government officials, and they have carried people out of Haiti on return flights, but they haven't set target dates for resuming commercial flights.
Haiti's lone international airport, in the capital of Port-au-Prince, is still not functioning normally since sustaining heavy damage in last month's earthquake.
- In Haiti, medical evacuation flights resume, schools reopen.
RELIEF EFFORTS
- GM donates 30 GMC Sierra pickups to help Haiti relief effort.
While many are opening up their checkbooks to help out Haiti, General Motors
Foundation is donating 30 GMC Sierra pickups to the Haitian relief effort to assist victims and aid workers, following a recent public call for vehicles to support recovery efforts by Bill Clinton.
- UN expert urges immediate cancellation of Haiti’s external debt.
An independent United Nations human rights expert today called for the immediate cancellation of Haiti’s external debt to allow it to recover from the devastating earthquake that struck the nation last month and move towards reconstruction.
Haiti’s current external debt amounts to about $890 million, around 70 per cent of which is owed to multilateral creditors, mainly the Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank.
- Should Conan, Goldman Sachs send megabucks to Haiti?
Wall Street's Goldman Sachs is taking a pounding in the blogsphere for failing to step up to serious relief efforts in Haiti.
[P]eople scoffed at the donation of $1 million by the firm, calculated to be 11 minutes of GS' 9 billion profits in 2009.
CRIMES
Everybody Hurts: R.E.M. song used to raise money for Haiti --- group waives royalties, British government exempts record from sales tax.
For the comprehensive list of disaster relief links, please check out Haiti Earthquake Relief at dkosopedia.
Funny kind of twilight zone thing happened when I tried earlier tonight to publish my diary that included this news update and the full list of disaster relief links that we copy and paste from a google document. My diary published, according to that nice little message we get when posting, but my diary was nowhere to be found on DK. So, I tried to hit publish again, and was told that I had already posted my quota for today. So, this is why my diary is providing a link to the disaster relief list rather than trying to include the google document again. Sorry for any inconvenience.